Land Carbon Module

Atmospheric CO2 is rising

graph of atmospheric CO2 over time from the Keeling Curve

Vegetation carbon is important

diagram of 2022 global carbon budget

NEON

NEON: 81 sites

Map of NEON sites

NEON Woody Carbon

  • Each site has a set of plots (either “tower” or “distributed”)
  • Each tree is mapped (species)
  • Each year, each tree is measured: status (live or dead) and diameter
diagram of NEON plot design

NEON Woody Carbon

  • Diameter can be converted to biomass using “allometric” relationships
  • Biomass can be converted to carbon (carbon = biomass x 0.5)
  • Allometric relationships are from Jenkin et al. (2004)
graph of allometric relationship

NEON Woody Carbon

  • Carbon for individual trees is summed within a plot to determine the plot carbon each year
  • The summed carbon is divided by the area (m^2) of the plot to standardize across plots of different size
  • All plots within a site averaged to get a site-level carbon for each year.
diagram of NEON site design

Structure of data

  • Data is spread across multiple tables
  • The data are stored in a relational database.
diagram database table relationship

New skills

  • Reading in database in R (collect)
  • Joining tables to create data frames for analysis (left_join)
  • Filtering on strings (str_detect)

Science Question

  • How much carbon is stored in a forest ecosystem and how does it differ across the U.S.?
  • I am a “client” interested in the carbon storage in vegetation of different ecosystems across the continental U.S. to guide my investment in the California Carbon Market.
  • Specifically, I want carbon stocks estimates from four sites in NEON